Sir Knight
by hrnelson99
Summary: Old Night is coming, and while some hide in fear of what is to come, others march out into the galaxy to fight in the Lord Commander's crusade. This story is of one such man, a noble of the Knight houses, who travels in exile to fight for mankind's future. A special thank you to Nick for editing for me and ever offering his welcome advice.
1. Chapter 1

I

"You have a commitment to your House, to the Red Planet. What the hell has gotten into your thick skull that makes you think you can turn your back on the people that have given you everything?" Princeps Akrapos Cant was shaking, his ancient and augmented flesh shaking with a swiftly rising desperation. He slammed his bionic fists into his steel throne; the crash of metal-on-metal soured through the lofty hall. The forged memorial-masks bolted to the rafters above stared downwards with long dead, disapproving eyes.

"I have come to you time and time again asking your permission, but every time you refused me. I am tired of your apathy father, of your willingness to let the entire Imperium crumble while we cater to a host of machine men." The last insult slipped like a dagger from the Knight's lips, and the blade was wet with venomous spite. "You have left me no other choice but to leave this planet in disgrace."

"Are you so blind, so drunk off that damnable Lord Commander's propaganda that you cannot see I only keep you here for your own good?" Akrapos leaned forward, his arms reaching out as if begging for understanding. His eyes, set deeply within dark sockets, were squeezed tight in anguish, "Only death waits for you beyond the House's gates, beyond the starport. The name of House Taranis cannot shield you out there!"

"I am a Knight. My place is out there," the Knight gestured to a tall window, where outside a stellar tether soared up and beyond the roiling smog banks, "where I can make a difference." Akrapos laughed: it was a hoarse, bitter laugh stained by centuries of experience.

"You can't make a difference. No one can! Old Night is returning, and the only thing we can do is take care of our own!"

"That is a coward's claim!" It was the Knights turn to raise his voice, "It is our duty, the very reason for our existence: to protect those who cannot protect themselves!"

Akrapos' heart ached: the boy sounded so much like his mother.

"You can't protect them all, son," Akrapos whispered. "Trying will only get you killed." The silence born from that statement grew. It swelled into a cankerous void that devoured the surroundings until all that existed between father and son was this moment. After an eternity, the Knight looked into his father's eyes for what could be the last time.

"We all die someday." The Knight turned, slowly, and beagn the long walk to the hall's adamantium gates. His eyes were fixed ever forward, never looking back; Akrapos saw nothing, his head buried in his shaking hands as his son- the last person he still cared for- marched to his doom.

II

The base klaxon blared over the clamor of NCOs as the command cadre of the Street Sweepers scrambled to organize a response to the sudden appearance of Chaos forces at the mouth of the valley. The _poomf-poomf_ of heavy bolter fire climbed to a thunderous racket as pillboxes all around the perimeter opened fire; the sound of battle escalated as sequential detonations tore through the defensive line. Each explosion threw hundreds of kilos of gore-soaked dirt in the air.

From his vantage point high above the battlefield, adept Graves could see three squat vehicles pushing through the defensive line. The machine spirit of his dropship picked out the protrusion of massive short barreled cannons extending just beyond the dozer of each vehicle. Where they went, the Imperial strongpoints were obliterated.

Graves angled the craft into a steep downward spiral, phosphorous flares and scrambler drones warding away the AA fire that filled the air around it. "Get ready to disembark!" Graves shouted over the noosphere. The bottom cargo door opened, and just as the dropship's retro-thrusters brought it to a screaming halt above the ground an 11-meter-tall giant of plasteel and adamantium plummeted through the bay doors. It landed confidently, gyro stabilizers and hydraulic pistons whining with stress but far from failure.

"Omnissiah guide you sir Knight," Graves voxed as he gunned his vessels thrusters and vectored out of the combat zone. The man who now only bore the moniker of Knight scanned for the targets he had picked out with the ship's auspex arrays: over the rolling hills of brush and scrub he saw, with the eyes of his steed that were as much his as those he was born with, the gleaming hulls of traitor armor cresting a hill. Targeting psalms and cogitation-writ outlined the first approaching vehicle as Knight aimed his mount's rapid-fire battle cannon. Two shells fired from the barrel in quick succession. The first skipped off the top of the assault vehicle; the second penetrated the command cupula and detonated, cooking off the ammo within in an explosion that obscured the two remaining vehicles. Knight felt the noospheric itch of a vox contact and accepted it.

"This is Major Sourgate of the Emperor's Street Sweepers to the metal motherfucker who just landed in my operating theatre. Thanks for the assist, but I need you to identify yourself." Knight guffawed despite himself: this was a commander who didn't bother with formalities, and that suited Knight perfectly.

"Major Sourgate, this is the Questoris Imperialis _Sentinel_ , here to lend a battle cannon and chainsword to the valley's defense. Do your spotters have LoS on the two surviving Vindicators?"

"You have impeccable timing lad," growled the major over the vox link. "Our spotters should be lighting the targets up now." On cue the auspex of the _Sentinel_ picked out and highlighted the bright beacons of laser designators deep in the plume of falling soil. The contacts were gunning it, and Knight was only able to pop off a poorly aimed Stormspear Missile from his carapace mount before he lost sight of them. Knight looked at the tactical map in the corner of his eye and grimaced.

" _Sentinel_ to Major Sourgate, the Vindicators are rolling up your western flank. I am moving to intercept." Knight drove his steed into a bounding lope, the trunk-like legs of _Sentinel_ kicking up great clods of soil as it powered over the terrain. Chimera APCs followed in his wake, their guns tracking the rolling hills on all sides in search of a target.

They found their mark: a four-hundred-pound bunker buster rocketed up from a copse of brush and slammed into the upper carapace of _Sentinel_. Memetic training paired with machine-heightened reflexes came to the fore, and Knight angled his steed's ion shield just in time to skip the round away like a stone off water. It detonated somewhere behind him, amidst the now scattering Chimera.

"You almost had me, traitor, but you won't get another chance!" _Sentinel_ turned into the copse where the Vindicator had hidden, tossing up desiccated trees as if they were nothing more than twigs. He picked out the thermal flare of exhaust amidst the brambles and fired his battle-cannon at the source. The round exploded magnificently, exposing the traitor vehicle, a superficial dent in its dozer. It popped smoke as it fishtailed away from the metal goliath, but Knight loosed two Stormspear missiles from their cradles. They struck deep into the ass-end of the vehicle, gutting its engine block in a scream of shattered gears and fire.

Knight thundered towards the vehicle as its crew clambered frantically out of the side hatch. He gunned them down with _Sentinel's_ chest-mounted heavy stubber and rammed his mount's massive chainsword straight into the heart of the vehicle. The traitorous machine spirit died in a shower of metal and slag, its betrayal paid in full. The pilot felt a wave of euphoria through the Throne Mechanicum: _Sentinel_ was pleased. The machine had languished in the vaults of Mars for so long, and both steed and rider felt fulfilled to be out on the field of battle doing the Omnisiah's work.

That's when Knight's auspex pinged wildly. _Sentinel_ swung about just in time to take the full force of a four-hundred-pound shell to its center mass.

The bio-feedback was too great, and Knight's mind whiplashed back into his body. His personal armor was intact, but the cabin was filled with steam and glowing alarm sigils; his tiny world began to turn, and with a groan he clung to his harness as his steed leaned back and crashed into the ground. Knight's vision was flooded with noosperic chatter from _Sentinel's_ subsystems, each reporting a litany of damage; one diagnostic made his blood run cold: the reactor had been breached. He recited the Psalm of Plasma Ejection, but the machine spirit of _Sentinel_ was in shock. A countdown began to tick in the corner of Knight's retinal display; he only had three minutes before the reactor went critical.

"Omnissiah damn it!" Knight slammed his fist into his sideways throne. He had only left the Mars a year ago, and this was how he was going to die? On an arid dust ball with not a single campaign to his name, felled by nothing more than a lucky shot?

For a second that stretched on forever, Knight wondered just how pathetic he would seem to his family back on Mars when they received news of his inglorious end. His mouth grew dry and his throat clenched tight as all the insecurities that had been festering since he left bubbled to the surface. His father was right: he could never hope to change anything out here. The Imperium was falling apart, and he was a fool for thinking he could do anything to stop it. He was worse than useless, having dragged the noble and ancient _Sentinel_ from its home to die alongside him in a perfectly unfitting end.

" _Fight on."_ Knight jumped with a start. Had that been a voice just now…

" _Get on your feet_." There it was again. It was coming from a single undamaged vox speaker set into the wall. The young man took off his helmet and pressed his ear against the device, the noise of alarms and the deadly countdown absent from his perception.

" _Stand up,"_ the voice was quiet and indistinct, like static within static, but sure enough it was there.

" _People are counting on you_ ," came the voice again.

"People are counting on me," Knight repeated. The words were simple, but they held so much power. Suddenly his mind was clear, and in-synchrony _Sentinel's_ machine spirit awoke a long dormant system deep within its core. From an innocuous Cog Mechanicum attached to the fiery heart of the machine sprouted a host of mechadendrites. They sought out damage and eased the machine's pain, mending armor and repairing shattered systems. In a mere minute the rent in the forward armor had been sealed and the plasma reactor had been stabilized. The repair hub continued its arduous work, its presence and function hazily entering Knight's consciousness.

" _Sentinel,_ you bear the Mark of the Omnisiah himself," Knight breathed. His blood thundered in his ears as the undying will of the machine flowed into his mind, suffusing his soul. It stoked his pride and zeal into a mighty pyre, burning doubt and fear to ash as Knight and steed became one again.

III

Autocannon rounds ricocheted off the hull of Major Sourgate's command Chimera, the turret gunner giving as good as he got with the vehicle's own multilaser. The knight had stalled the traitor's advance, and eleven of the regiments mechanized infantry squads had mobilized and reversed the flow of the battle. Sourgate had seen the knight laying in a ruin with a gaping, smoke filled hole in its front armor. He doubted it would be getting back up, but every battle demanded sacrifice, and better the knight than his own men.

"Carson, what's the ETA on our artillery support?" Sourgate yelled over the ringing of enemy rounds slamming into the vehicles hull.

"Fifty seconds!" Carson was cradling a broken arm, his one good hand flicking through vox channels on the transmitter. Sourgate grunted in acknowledgement before crawling into the driver section. The driver, Alexander, gave him a nod before handing his co-pilot a hopper filled with heavy bolter cartridges. Sourgate pressed his eyes to the telescopic sight and blinked away the brightness.

Three hundred meters from the bend in the river where the Chimera was hulled down in, at the crest of a line of hills, traitor light armor was putting out a fusillade. The counter-attack group had lost two of the eleven Chimera they had started with and were now forced to exchange pot-shots with the superior enemy position.

"Lieutenant Decius says he is pulling back with his men," Carson yelled, his eyes distant as he tried to hear whoever was on the other half of the line. "Wait," he said as Major Sourgate crawled towards him, a pissed off look on his face. "I just lost contact with Decius' group, Major," Carson said. A shadow passed over his face. "The last thing I heard was this… this…"

"Spit it out boy, what did you hear!" Sourgate snapped, the hair on the back of his neck standing on end as they always did when he had a bad feeling about something. Right now, he had a very bad feeling indeed.

"It sounded like something was chewing its way through the hull, sir. Vox-man Irius, the last thing I heard was him screaming." The color in Carson's face had gone out, and then the racket outside was joined by the bass section of artillery ordinance.

"Try and raise the other vehicles in the Lieutenant's section Carson." Major Sourgate punched his Vox-man lightly in the shoulder, pulling the boy out of whatever horror he was imagining happened to the other section. "Stay with me Carson," he said. Carson nodded and got back to work.

"Alexander!" Sourgate yelled into the driver's compartment. "put the pedal to the metal and get us within spitting distance of those heretic fucks!" The Chimera accelerated from its shelter, followed quickly by the other vehicles in the task force as they pulled out of their positions.

Obscuring clouds of chem-smoke burst into being all along the offensive line, while a harrying barrage of Basilisk shells fell atop the enemy. Timing was crucial, and from his seat Sourgate watched his chronometer intently as the seconds ticked by. Thirty…twenty-nine…twenty-eight…By the time the line of Imperial APCs breached the last smoke bank they had run out of time, and the artillery barrage lifted. The Imperials had played their gambit, and now, a mere fifty meters from the stunned enemy armor, they struck.

"Fire at will!" The order went down the line, and suddenly the Imperials were amongst the enemy. Las fire strobed wildly from firing ports and the barrels of multilasers, lashing out at the cowering enemy weapon teams that had been caught in the barrage. One of the Imperial vehicles had its track shot to pieces by a las-cannon, only for the AFV that had fired at it to be cored out by an enfilade of heavy bolter fire. One Chimera sprayed a retreating medical halftrack with promethium, setting its wounded passengers ablaze. Elsewhere, Major Sourgate's Chimera circled a traitor Chimera that had been immobilized by a lucky artillery shell. The traitors put up a valiant fight, but once their rear armor was exposed the vehicle fell silent as its insides were lased with high-intensity las-fire.

The enemy fell into a full retreat, its forward elements overwhelmed by the insanely dangerous Imperial charge.

The remaining traitors were being chased back to the mouth of the valley when a pack of loping metallic beasts exploded from the brush on the Imperial's left flank. Their hunched backs went well above the roof of a Chimera, and fire belched from their hellish maws as they roared their hunting call into the air. They slammed into the flanks of the racing Chimera, tearing armor off with their motorized teeth while their massive claws dug into the metal hide of the Chimera.

"Task force, pull ba-"

That was all Major Sourgate could get out before something tackled the side of the Chimera. He was thrown to the floor as his world went topsy-turvy. When his senses came to him, he was lying face down on the ceiling of the troop compartment. His command squad were firing frantically out the fire ports as something very big and very angry pried open a hole in the side armor. Suddenly the gigantic, gold and black muzzle of a mechanical monster tore through the metal and began biting wildly at the men inside. Veteran Kirsk had his entire left side bitten off in a spray of crimson, while las fire flashed harmlessly off the beast's unnatural snout. The thing pulled itself out of the cabin, dragging the entrails of Kirsk with it, when the earth began to shake. Beyond the hollow safety of the cabin, a brazen war horn could be heard. There was a hiss of surprise from the unseen beast, then a scream of metal on metal accompanied by a far more horrific howl of daemonic anguish. From his spot on the floor, Sourgate could see a massive chainsword many times the length of a man dive into the flaming heart of the monster. The beast thrashed uselessly until a column of pistons and adamantium came down and crushed its head.

"Someone get me eyes on what's out there!" the Major ordered, climbing to his feet when it was clear no one was willing to risk their neck by going outside. He slammed an opening sigil and the rear ramp rose up and away. The commander crawled clambered out and looked up to behold his savior.

It was the crimson and white knight from before; Sourgate blinked when he saw that the massive rent in its armor that had felled it was now gone, replaced with an unpainted blotch of armor. The major ducked instinctively as the avatar of destruction swung its massive battle-cannon towards him. Training kicked in and Sourgate breathed out. Two overwhelming explosions rolled over him as the cannon fired. If the major had not been temporarily deafened, he would have heard the death scream of a daemon engine. A shadow passed overhead, and the knight was driven back as the last animalistic machine leaped onto his upper carapace. The two titans of metal plodded away from the derelict Chimera, and Sourgate saw the daemon engine lose its grip on the knight's rounded armor plates and fall to the ground. It came to the earth in two separate pieces, bisected mid-fall by a titanic chainsword.

The late sun reflecting off its gleaming plate, Knight and _Sentinel_ gazed out onto the field of battle. Traitor armor littered the field, and the abominable marriage of machine and the warp had been annihilated. The enemy was running, and their days were numbered. Knight tilted his mount's head to look directly at the wiry, chestnut haired officer that had crawled out of the injured Chimera.

There was nothing to be said now, nothing that would not spoil the victorious moment, so Knight simply nodded _Sentinel's_ head to the commander. Major Sourgate stood there for a second before returning the gesture.

Both men knew that whatever respite they had won was temporary, but for the moment both were content to gaze out over the land they had defended and breathe a sigh of relief to still be alive.


	2. Chapter 2

After long months of college taking up my time, I finally had the time to continue my "Sir Knight" story. A big thank you to Nick for going over my stories and giving me advice on how to improve them, and I encourage every reader to please leave a review on what they think I can improve on. I enjoy writing these stories, and I want to improve with every piece. If you just want to say "keep up the good/okay/bad work," that works too!

I

It had been two days since the Street Sweepers and Knight of the Questoris Imperialis had routed the Chaos spearhead. The Sweepers had combed the battlefield for what could be salvaged, burned the bodies, and advanced a hundred kilometers into enemy territory. Resistance had been light: the enemy had not expected a break in their lines. Command had given orders to Major Sourgate to hold the dinky-little town of Plumb Gate and stop any Chaos forces from escaping encirclement by Imperial forces further down the front.

Plumb Gate was a pueblo village at a crucial junction in the locality's maze of valleys. The major had his spotters climb a vox tower and take a topological of the region: south of the village, one could get lost in the same river valleys the Imperial's had been fighting in for the last month; north of Plumb Gate, a narrow valley led uphill to the Chaos held hinterlands. Plumb Gate had no more than fifty structures in its bounds, and the only building of note was a squat administrative bunker whose ferrocrete construction made it stand out like a sore thumb. Major Sourgate's command staff – Vox Man Carson, Astropath Decius, Lieutenant Ogreman, and Mechanicus attaché Kappa-770-Alpha- had turned the bunker into the regimental HQ and were discussing how to distribute their defenses when Knight walked into the command center. Sourgate came out from behind the flickering hololith and clasped Knight's armored glove.

"Knight," the Major said, his voice carrying a note of professional respect.

"Major," Knight replied, his voice emanating from a speaker on his sealed helmet. Major had never seen the man without his helmet on, and he doubted he would ever get used to it: Sourgate could not trust a man who would not look him in the eye. " _Sentinel_ and I will be ready to take to the field within the hour. How goes the fortifications?"

"They're coming along," grumbled Sourgate. He cracked his knuckles as he waved Knight over to the hololith. He gestured at the neon orange icons of dug-in Chimeras on the north and south sides of town. "Twenty-two of our motor pool are dug in at the outskirt of town, while the other twenty-one are being held in reserve near the center of town as a reaction force."

"We can't know which way the enemy will come, can we?" Knight asked.

"No, but I bet my last pack of smokes heretic reinforcements from the hinterlands will come and sandwich us once they see their allies trying to push through. The real question is whether we can hold two lines of battle at once until our own reinforcements break through. Speaking of which…" Major Sourgate nodded to a vermillion robed woman meditating in a corner, a rod with a stylized eye symbol at one end laid across her lap. Her eyes were shrouded by a veil, but lightning-bolt scars creeped out from under the veil.

"My brothers and sisters tell of many dangers left in the traitor's wake," whispered the woman, her voice carrying unnaturally far despite its volume. "The Guard progress slowly, and the void war above will not allow the Navy to bring in reinforcements directly. More Chaos warships have emerged from the Screaming Void and continue to contest the space around this planet." She lifted her head and seemed to gaze directly at Knight, "It is a wonder you made here at all, boy." There was a meaning behind the words none present could decipher, save the astropath herself.

"Not that anyone is complaining, sir Knight," chimed Vox Man Carson from his radio station, breaking the awkward silence that threatened to bloom. "If you had not shown up when you did, my bum would be chow for those forge-crawlers!" Knight shrugged.

"I was only doing my duty. No thanks required…," Knight muttered, feeling entirely unsure of how he should reply.

"Any ways, we have just under eight hundred armed men in this hamlet, and I have zero intel on what the archenemy will throw at us. Lieutenant Ogreman has a few Sentinels out in the field, but they'll only buy us a half-hour buffer between knowing when the enemy is coming and when they hit. That's where you come in." The major pointed at Knight, "I don't know what your machine can do, but by the looks of it you are our only reliable answer to a heavy armor push."

"I had heard the enemy lost the bulk of their armor in a previous engagement, some 2-odd weeks ago?" Knight asked. The Major lifted an eyebrow.

"I was wondering how up to date you were on the war," Sourgate snorted, "but yes, while they still have some heavy armor floating around, the damn traitors lost most of their armor when the last holdouts in Forge Skullmac turned the forge's main reactor into a bomb." There was a moment of silence in honor of the fallen. Amidst a nest of terminals in the back of the room, a bare headed tech-priest with a holo-tatoo covered pate gave a quiet binaric prayer, then spoke.

"Odds of survival were estimated at two percent and were falling every computation cycle." The priest paused, applying unguents to a cogitator before continuing, "Projections were calculated by the Three Magi, and their conclusion was sent to all surviving members of the Forge's clergy: Skullmac would fall, but the world of Quietude need not. The decision was made to neutralize as much of the traitor forces as possible, and deny the hereteks their prize, in the most efficient and thorough way available." The words would have choked the throat of another man, but Kappa-770-Alpha spoke as if he was reporting the day's weather. For Knight, who had grown up in the company of such unemotional adepts of the Machine God, the apathy of the techpriest still shook him. Knight fitted his knuckles into the holy symbol of two interlocking gears and gave a small nod to the techpriest. He tried to reply, perhaps make an oath of vengeance in honor of Skullmac, but Knight's throat was tight as a vice.

Knight had spent his entire life on Mars, learning the ways of the Omnissiah and how to uphold his duty as a scion of House Taranis. The young man had sparred out on the scrap-laden rust fields of Mars, even joined in hunts into the Forge-Deeps to purge the technological horrors that skulked there; and yet, he had never sailed beyond the red planet and seen what dangers lurked beyond. Knight shuddered: it shook his soul to imagine any Forge city being destroyed, let alone by its own defenders in desperation. He had been taught by the sacristans, the holy mechanics of his House that maintained the knight engines, that the works of the Machine God were as permanent as they were incorruptible.

 _What a pretty lie that was,_ Knight thought.

"Major," Vox Man Carson from his station, a look of grim excitement on his face, "Lieutenant Ogreman got word from his outriders. They're coming."

II

Private Torf scrambled into the safety of his downed Sentinel as las flashed and bullets screamed through the darkness around him. The guardsman had leaped from his vehicle when a las discharge had severed his walker's leg the Sentinel crashed to the ground, but Torf had realized quickly the cockpit was the only piece of cover on the dusty hill face. The walker's controls exploded in a shower of metal and sparks, and the seat's padding was flayed away as Torf quivered in the small footwell of the open cockpit.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Torf screamed, his heart beating madly in his ears; his vision shrank to a small tunnel. Some brave or dutiful part of Torf snatched the radio mouthpiece from its exposed hook. "This is Private Torf of Squad S-1! We were scouting the southeastern valley when…!" Torf jumped when a stray shot severed the mouthpiece's cable. He slammed the useless scrap into the floor and pulled his las-carbine from the cabin wall.

The private struggled to remember the rite of proper function before giving up and smacking the gun's activation rune. He could hear footsteps approaching, but before Torf could clamber out of the footwell and fire some blind shots over the cabin wall, an indigo tentacle shot inside the cabin and wrapped around his waist. Torf screamed as the freakish limb tried to tug him out of his refuge and he pulled the trigger of his carbine, sending beams wildly into the offensive limb. The tentacle spasmed and bled molten copper, and an insane, warbling cry split the night air, but still it pulled until Torf was yanked into the darkness.

Torf was surrounded by traitors, as diverse in attire as they were damned: some wore simple peasants clothing, torn and matted with dried blood, or the defiled robes of priests, and other still bore the garb of PDF troopers. Something else was also there, its squirming and swollen form mercifully obscured by bodies, but the heretics surrounded him before he could make out what it was. The private punched, kicked and bit off more than a few pieces of flesh in the ensuing melee, but he was outnumbered. He barely registered a heretic, his flesh-mask covered in eye-watering runes, as he plunged a needle into his arm. Numbness overcame Torf and he collapsed into a delirious heap.

He tried to scream for help, but his body refused to move as the traitors formed a circle and began chanting. The masked heretic raised Torf's hand and lifted his mask to reveal a lipless mouth. He bit Torf's pinky; the private felt nothing, but his stomach tightened in revulsion. The pinky was spit out, and its bloody stump was used to scrawl runes onto the private's face that burned. The chanting increased in tempo, and other voices emerged from the song…

 _No_ , Torf realized, _they're in my head_.

The voices uttered words that were non-sensical, their language not fit for any physical mouth to utter, and with every syllable the loyal guardsman could feel his grip on reality slipping away. He imagined his arms and legs were stretching, that his face was elongating into a monstrous beak. He saw in his mind's eye his muscles swelling with cancerous black growths while bony spurs erupted all over his body.

The wreck of a man prayed for the Emperor to save him. The voices inside of him jeered hatefully in reply, and with horror Torf realized he was hearing his own voice. He tried to cover his mouth, but his arms would not respond. His eyes widened as his body suddenly stood up, and the Emperor damned traitors began to rejoice and let out animalistic shouts of madness. What was once a man got on all fours and began to gallop on stilt like limbs in the direction of Plumb Gate, and all Torf could do was scream within the confines of his mind as something pupetted his warped body.

III

Across the valley south of Plumb Gate, unnatural shapes raced through the night. They made for the town, calling out to each other with the cries of damned souls. The Street Sweepers answered with a fusillade of flares.

Bathed in crimson light, the spawn of chaos spilled over the rocky valley like a river of tainted meat and gnashing maws. Some men of the Street Sweepers fell to the ground in shock or ran from their posts screaming. The latter were put down by regimental Commisar Brant, both as an act of mercy and in order to restore order to the line. Sporadic fire from prepared positions and dugouts only hastened the charging abominations, the malefic nature of the creatures allowing them to move long after natural law demanded their death. The wave of flesh had made it to the two-hundred-meter mark when the Hellhounds emerged.

Racing out of the village streets came the detachment's five Hellhounds, letting loose torrents of purifying flame so intense that it hurt the eyes to look at them directly. A host of men would have broken in the face of a Hellhound, let alone a squadron of five. But nothing human remained in the monsters the Street Sweepers faced, and their melting and charred forms stumbled headless through the wall of flame. Weapons fire lit up the night, cutting down what made it past the Hellhounds, but still the horde came.

Major Sourgate was watching the scene on the hololith of the command HQ while Carson funneled pertinent reports to him. He wanted to pull back the Hellhounds, keep them in reserve until the dregs were put down and the assault began in earnest, but the line would collapse without those flame tanks. Flickering contacts appeared farther south, and just as Sourgate squinted his eyes in grim understanding one of the Hellhound's icons went dark.

"The Hounds are reporting enemy fire," Carson reported calmly.

"Tell sergeant Markus to pull his squadron into the town," Sourgate ordered, knowing it was redundant. Markus wasn't stupid, and Sourgate watched as the Hellhounds reversed from the front line. The enemy armor had arrived, and the Hellhounds were sitting out in the open like practice targets.

A bass roar shook the earth, causing dust to fall from the bunker's ferrocrete ceiling. The hair on Sourgate's nape stood on end. He was about to contact his spotters to see if they had seen what the hell that was when he noticed _Sentinel's_ massive signature break from the center of the defensive line. It was heading for the heart of the oncoming horde.

IV

Knight's steed thundered down the slope, massive clods of soil flying behind it as _Sentinel's_ reactor shunted all available power to locomotion. With practiced ease Knight leaped over the top of a retreating Hellhound, _Sentinel_ 's leg crushing a hideous wretch with pole-like limbs and a beaked visage that was trying to pry open the vehicle's top hatch. Knight drove onward, smashing spawn underfoot as he passed through the ring of fire the Hellhounds had left behind. Knight emerged on the other side wading through a sea of monstrosities and cultists who clawed vainly at the adamantine hide of his steed, but the pilot paid them nothing but contempt as they were crushed underfoot. He was hunting bigger game.

Lumbering like kings amidst a court of lesser nightmares, a trio of rotting, towering conglomerates crawled towards the Imperial line. Each was a hulk of corpses spliced to a skeleton of black iron, and they stood as tall as _Sentinel_. As one they roared with mouths formed from fused bone, the cry of a thousand victims. Knight's blood ran fast, and cold hate flowed through the Throne Mechanicum as _Sentinel_ railed against the existence of such apocalyptic abominations.

"By the Omnissiah and the Emperor, I shall not quit the field until you all lie dead at my feet!" Knight swore, and his steed sounded a dirge over the war horn as it raced to meet the enemy. Thunder boomed overhead. With singular purpose the conglomerates came about, iridescent energy flickering over their fleshy forms. Warp lightning shot out, piercing _Sentinel_ ' _s_ shields and warping its sanctic armor. Knight roared with his steed's pain and loosed a spread of Stormspears. The rockets lit the night and sank deep into the conglomerates before detonating. Bodies were blown apart and fouled iron shattered; the conglomerates did not fall, but the warp lightning ceased. Without warning a cannon shot out from behind the three beasts and detonated against _Sentinel's_ ion shield.

Beyond the conglomerates lay the true enemy force, an army of fully mechanized traitors. Knight almost retreated then, but even in the face of overwhelming force his oath bound him to destroy the three goliaths before him. With a thought smoke shells were loaded into _Sentinel's_ battle cannon, and he aimed four rounds between the conglomerates and the approaching armor. Clouds of obscuring incense filled the air.

With lighting seared nerves, Knight closed with the first conglomerate and slashed Sentinel's massive chainsword across its side. It reeled like an animal in pain, but before Knight could lose a salvo of HEAT rounds into it, _Sentinel_ lurched to the side as another conglomerate tackled the machine bodily. The pilot's disgust was replaced with horror as a limb of grasping, moaning human bodies reached for his steed's exposed head. He yelled wordlessly and backpedaled, firing his heavy stubber to no effect at the limb. _Sentinel_ lurched again, forced to one knee as a conglomerate brought its face to _Sentinel's_. Steam poured from its mouth, and a painful glow escaped from lips made from writhing legs. Knight brought the chainsword to life, bit it was pinned beneath a mound of flesh. The son of Mars gritted his teeth and, using the pinning weight as a balance, swung his steed's leg up and over the conglomerates head and drove the monster face first into the ground.

A loud hiss escaped the creature while it thrashed under the crouching _Sentinel_. The glow within its body grew. Knight drove off the two remaining conglomerates with HEAT rounds as gouts of pink flame shot out from the one beneath it. There was a bright flash as the rear of the trapped conglomerate swelled and backfired a nova of warp-stuff that cascaded towards the oncoming enemy armor. Unreality spiraled in mad fractals that tore apart the earth, sky and all that lay between. A conglomerate and dozens of enemy vehicles were twisted into motes of light and shadow while the earth cracked into a molten plane. Demons clawed at the tortured armor of _Sentinel_ , its machine spirit exercising them with binaric hymns and electric wards while the neverborn faded from the material world.

When reality settled, the valley was a burning ruin filled with the dead, dying and the desperately fighting. Knight blinked as blood pouring from his eyes: the brief warp tear had been of a terrible beauty, and he had been unable to tear his eyes away from it. His body rebelled against what it had seen and was wracked with roaming pains. He felt bile build in his throat as the last, wounded conglomerate limped towards him. Knight struggled to move his body, to finish the beast off, but found he could not move or muster the mental will to control _Sentinel_. He trembled from head to toe, shaking in the Throne Mechanicum like a toddler. The mound of tortured meat drew closer.


End file.
